Saturday, 13 November, 2010
Scott and I are still here in Melbourne, Florida and are enjoying the SSCA (seven seas cruising association) GAM here. We arrived here around 4:00 pm on Thursday and put down the anchor in a lovely spot just off of Eau Gallie/ Melbourne. We are very glad it worked out for us to be able to attend such a great event as this and we've enjoyed meeting many friendly, knowledgeable folks at the GAM.
Our Thursday night in this anchorage proved to be exciting since the winds got up over 30 knots during the night and both Scott and I worried about our anchor not holding. I even had a nightmare about us breaking loose and going up on shore! But, thankfully, all was well Friday morning considering our anchor behaved admirably. Scott says (and I agree) that this was a pretty good test for the new anchor.
Friday, we attended the seminars all day and the weather was windy but warm -- around 78 degrees. A lovely lady from Ontario, Danielle Courtneau, kindly gave me a ride across the bridge at 3:00 when the seminar ended so I could replenish our fridge. We were totally out of bread, milk, etc. so I was very happy to get a chance to go to the Publix here. When you don't have a car or other way to get to a store, reprovisioning takes on a whole new meaning. When we got back to the dinghy dock from our errand, I saw Scott there with our dinghy and 2 other men, the cover off our motor. Turns out, the throttle lever on our outboard motor had broken off sometime during the day so we couldn't put the motor in gear....an unfortunate development! Some kind SSCA folk offered us a tow in their dinghy so we bumped over the waves back to Painkiller, grateful for their help. Coincidentally, we'd been given information by kind folks at lunch that day about Vero Beach and, thanks to them, we had the number for the Vero Beach Municipal Marina. Scott called them to discuss getting a replacement part when we're there Monday and Tuesday. So we feel good about being able to get the outboard motor repaired there next week. Ah, the kindness of strangers....
Saturday morning, Scott discovered he could use vice grips to grab what was left of the throttle shifter to put it in "forward" so we were able to dinghy over to the dock for the day's seminars. I enjoyed learning to tie some knots from Pam Wall, a veteran sailor and real wit and Scott attended a seminar on weather. We left the civic center around 3:00 to head over to the library overlooking the water, so we could catch up on email, etc. Tonight, we're thinking we'd like to have dinner at a restuarant next to the dinghy dock -- Squid Lips. What a name, huh?
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